The Glimpses of the Moon (40 page)

‘De Brisay won't get much of a sentence, though, will he, so long as you don't testify against him?'

‘Well, I shan't do that,' said the Rector, spooning up more soup. ‘I most certainly shan't do
that.
Wretched misguided fellow's more than repaid his debt to society, as far as I'm concerned. Lovely soot, stink like a polecat, half deafened, and then that fellow in leggings comes along and conks him on the nut with his mill-board.
Haw-haw,'
said the Rector, his Christian charity momentarily in abeyance. ‘No testifying from me. No bringing charges, I mean.'

‘But the police are going to bring charges,' Fen pointed out.

‘Let 'em.'

‘Which means you're bound to be sub-poena'd.'

‘Oh Lor', does it?'

‘Of course it does. So what are you going to say?'

The Rector thought about this; then: ‘I shall tell Hizonner,' he announced eventually, ‘that I deliberately lured the man into my house. And it'll be quite true. I did.'

‘And that you then deliberately lured him into surreptitiously making off with your grandmother's jewel-safe?'

‘H'm. Yes, I see what you mean. That's going to be a bit more difficult.'

‘I never saw any good that came of telling truth. Dryden.'

‘That wet.'

‘Yes, fancy anyone thinking that
Paradise Lost
would make a good light opera,' said the Major. ‘I'm surprised Milton let him in the house. Now, let's see, where was I?'

‘It was I who was speaking,' said the Rector, peeved. ‘Though evidently not to much effect… Fen, if you were in my position, what would
you
do?'

‘I'd tell them the whole thing from beginning to end, just as it happened. It really is quite funny, you know. The judge'll be so sorry for poor de Brisay that he'll get off very lightly, you'll see.' (And this, in the event, was what happened.)

The fine spell had broken at last: it was not only blowy and rainy, the gusts flinging the raindrops against the old window-panes of the Dickinsons' cottage like handfuls of tiny pebbles; it was cold as well, and Fen's two guests were grateful when he moved the kitchen table close to the Rayburn. A farewell party, this was to have been, but two of the invited had proved unable to come. Thouless was all agog, since for once he had been commissioned to compose the score for a film not involving more work for the make-up people, the special effects men and the art director than for anyone else. True, he told Fen, a very similar type of music seemed to be expected of him, but he was hoping to insinuate a late-Romantic chord or two here and there. Anyway, he was very sorry, but he was committed to go to Pinewood to see the film a second time, and so couldn't, much as he would have liked to, share in the jollifications Fen had presumably planned.

‘What's the film called?' Fen had asked, mildly interested.

‘Warts.'

‘I see. And what's it about?'

‘Almost entirely, it's about several couples having a bang in bed in Paris. They keep switching around, but I'm not sure of the reason. Anyway, some of the things they get up to - ! You'd scarcely think they were anatomically possible. I mean, there are some angles the human skeletal and muscular structures are quite simply incapable of, so I suppose a lot of it must
be trick photography. The great thing is, though, from my point of view, that it's not about monsters, it's about sex. There are bits I can use up, too, one long section in particular, for where the hero and heroine seem to be standing on their heads, mother-naked, with their toes intertwined. I don't know,' Thouless said doubtfully, ‘that I should very much want to try that myself.'

‘Anyway, the point is, you've already got the music for it.'

‘For that particular scene, yes, I have. Quite a big bit which they cut out of
The Blob.
I shall scarcely have to alter it at all.'

‘And what was it for originally?'

‘It was for beaked dekapods being slowly incinerated by a death-ray in a space-ship. Much the same sort of thing, really. Well, cheerio. Been nice knowing you. Have a good time.'

Padmore's leave-taking had been considerably less ebullient. ‘I can't think what I've done wrong,' he kept saying to Fen, who had gone to Glazebridge station that morning to see him off. ‘I just can't think what I've done wrong. They said I was doing such a
good
job down here, and -'

‘Yes, of course you did a good job, but the telegram explained that, didn't it? The Crime Staff is fit to go to work again.'

‘Yes.' Padmore stared for the umpteenth time at the message on the piece of paper which had been delivered to him with his breakfast: ‘Come back to London soonest prepare leave for Libya soonest terrorists blowing up all the oilwells there.' ‘I don't like bombs,' said Padmore. ‘I don't
want
to be bombed.'

‘Never mind,' Fen consoled him. ‘I expect you'll have been expelled by Gadafi long before anyone has a chance to bomb you. Besides, just think. It might have been Uganda.'

‘Oh God.'

‘Or Angola.'

‘Oh God, God … Gervase, you know what I'm going to do?'

‘No. What?'

‘I'm going to buy myself a little cottage here in Devon and just write books about murders.'

‘There aren't
many
murders down here, you know. These last few months have been quite exceptional.'

‘Oh, I don't mean just Devon murders. Murders everywhere, and particularly the old ones, which have never been properly
solved. There was an extraordinary business in Victorian times in Balham, for instance -'

‘I'm afraid you'll find that about six thousand books have been written about the Bravo Case already.'

‘Well,
something.'
Padmore fixed his eyes on one of the innumerable B.R. symbols dotted about the station - simplified representations, they seemed, of a particularly nasty derailment. ‘There must be
something.
Your own cases, now - '

‘Crispin writes those up,' said Fen, ‘in his own grotesque way.
¹
And there's not much money in it, John. In writing about any murders, I mean.'

‘I don't need much,' said Padmore lachrymosely. ‘A roof over my head, a warm fire in winter, beans on toast, clothes, whisky, wine, a car, a stereogram, records, books, just a few decent sticks of furniture - that'd have to be Georgian, I certainly couldn't afford Queen Anne - a daily, a gardener, - a -'

‘A crooked Tax Accountant,' Fen suggested.

A whistle blew and the train began to move. Padmore grasped Fen's hand through the open window, and bade fair to drag him at increasing speed right along the platform and off the end of it unless he literally wrenched himself free. The newspaperman - whose vocation, Fen judged, though misguided, was unlikely ever to be replaced by anything else -continued despite this forcible parting to wave from the window until the train rounded a curve and his atebrin-yel-lowed face was lost from sight.

So now, in the cosy warmth of the Dickinsons' cottage's kitchen, it was just Fen, and the Rector, and the Major. Stripey, judging the weather too inclement for venery, was asleep in the adjoining room.

‘Good soup, this,' said the Rector. ‘I'il have some more,' he added, never backward in making his requirements known.

‘That's the way,' said Fen, ladling the fluid on to the Rector's plate from a saucepan on the stove.

‘And what's for afters?'

‘Cold roast partridge, salad, mashed potatoes. Peaches in brandy and Brie.'

‘Sounds all right.'

‘Mostly from Fortnum's, I'm afraid. But the soup,' said Fen,

‘I made myself.'

‘Delish.'

‘You, Major?' Fen asked. ‘Basis is shin of beef.'

‘Excellent, my dear fellow, excellent.'

‘It ought to be excellent, because I've been boiling it up every day for more than a week now.'

‘So I can imagine,' said the Major, paling slightly. ‘Yes, really quite excellent. Very… very
strong.'

‘The wine's good, too.' The Rector picked up one of the two bottles and stared incredulously at the label.
‘La Tache, 1953?'
he exclaimed. ‘I didn't know there was any left in the world. However did you get hold of it?'

‘There are still a few dozen in the College cellars.'

‘Bibulous dons,' said the Rector, holding his glass to the light. ‘Lovely orangey colour. I'll have some more of that, too.'

‘Join me
in
a Sweet Martini,' the Major chanted, to the tune of
Frère Jacques.
‘It has taste! It has taste!'

‘You've had quite enough to drink already, Major,' said the Rector severely. ‘And besides, it's very ill-bred to sing at table.'

‘It's gotta be Tide — Noo Tide!'

‘Kindly be
quiet.
Fen, did Ortrud Youings kill Routh?'

‘Oh, I should think so, yes. In fact, she boasted of it when they arrested her. But then she changed her mind, when they got a lawyer in to look after her. And after that, she wouldn't speak anything but German - she's one of those women who can never stop talking, but she had the sense to wrap it up until they could get an interpreter, and that took quite a long time. After that, it was German for days on end, and Not Guilty all along the line. Of course, they'll have her for bashing her husband, but as to Routh - well, there's some independent evidence against her, from
X,
but that may not be quite enough. What obviously happened was that she went out for a walk on the evening before the Bust girl found the body, met Routh, and tried to seduce him, as she did anything in trousers. And Routh, I think, must have simply jeered at her (he wasn't a one for the women anyway, let alone a tigress like that), so that she got enraged and knocked him on the head.'

‘Was she the woman Hagberd was referring to when he said he was “crook with a sheila”?'

‘I imagine so, don't you? She'd have tried her little games on him, all right. But Hagberd was - is - a bit of a puritan. He'd have been shocked to the core at the idea of having an
affaire
with the wife of another man - especially if the other man were someone he liked, such as Youings. So Hagberd turned our Ortrud down, and she was fresh from that humiliation when miserable little Routh had the nerve to turn her down, too. It was too much, and she simply brained him - and went on her way singing, I've no doubt, as happily as a lark. And then Hagberd chanced on the body, and although he wouldn't himself have
killed
Routh (almost everyone in the neighbourhood agreed about that), he was quite dotty enough to do the dismembering and play all the foolish tricks with the head.'

‘Will the Court find Ortrud guilty but insane, or whatever the phrase is nowadays?'

‘I expect so. And then after she's been put away for a few years, some lunatic Parole Board will decide that she's now fit to be a member of society again, in which case' - Fen shrugged - 'the whole thing will probably happen all over again, somewhere else.'

‘Which brings us,' said the Rector, ‘to
X.'

‘Ah yes,
X.'
Fen nodded. ‘Psychologically, I think the most interesting murderer I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. Great cunning combined with crass stupidity. Great unscrupulousness and great sense of duty. Great bravado - with a humorous touch to it, even - and ridiculous timidity. Great good luck, and great bad…'

The Rector drank wine. ‘Luckraft,' he said. ‘Police Constable Andrew Aloysius Luckraft. Seen him about the place for donkey's years, and until the papers printed them, for the life of me I couldn't have told you either of his Christian names.'

‘Brothers,' said Fen, rather as if addressing a trade union of two. ‘Andrew Luckraft had a brother, George. They didn't greatly resemble one another either in looks or in temperament. As regards temperament, although it was Andrew who committed
the fratricide, George was in character by far the more criminal of the two. If he hadn't decided to blackmail Andrew for every penny Andrew could produce, he wouldn't have been killed - and probably, when the money ran out, Andrew would have gone to the authorities and told them the whole dismal story, including the virtually certain murder of Routh by Ortrud Youings. As it was, he got the wherewithal to pay his exigent brother from a
second
blackmail. Youings, as we know, doted on Ortrud - though he's got over that now, thank heavens; and Youings had a bit of money in addition to owning the pig farm. So when Andrew found out that it was Ortrud, almost incontrovertibly, who had broken Routh's pate for him, he knew where to turn in order to meet his brother's demands. Youings would believe him, all right, when told what Ortrud had done - for all his uxoriousness, he had no illusions at all about his wife's occasional shocking malignancy and violence -and Youings would pay. In his turn, Andrew would pay George out of the proceeds. And that was really the only link between the two cases. It's unique, though, as far as I'm aware -
A
blackmailing
B
for the cash to silence C, who in a sort of circlet is blackmailing
A.'

‘Yes, I see that much, my dear fellow, and as far as it goes it's very clearly put, if you'll forgive my mentioning it. But there must have been a lot of factors which haven't appeared in the papers, as far as I know. F'rinstance, I don't understand how -'

‘And you never will,' said the Rector testily, ‘if you don't keep your mouth shut and let Fen get on with it in his own way. As to the papers, the police, since it concerns one of their own number, aren't giving out a scrap more information than they absolutely have to. What I don't understand is how Fen comes to know so much more about the business than anyone else. What I can't see -'